The State Intellectual Property Office responded to the "Recommendations on Further Optimizing and Adjusting the National Invention Patent Examination Cycle"-Industry News-Shenzhen deep trust patent Agency Co., LTD

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The State Intellectual Property Office responded to the "Recommendations on Further Optimizing and Adjusting the National Invention Patent Examination Cycle"

Release Time：

2022-08-11

Representative Huang Lusheng: I have received your “Suggestions on Further Optimizing and Adjusting the National Invention Patent Examination Cycle” and hereby reply as follows. In your suggestions, you focused on the needs of innovative entities for patent review time limits, and provided opinions and suggestions in terms of response time for review opinions, review mode, proposal timing management, review working mechanism, etc., which are highly targeted and of reference significance. Our Office deeply expresses its sincere Recognize it, and carefully incorporate it into practical work to continuously improve the efficiency of patent examination.

Representative Huang Lusheng:

I have received your "Suggestions on Further Optimizing and Adjusting the National Invention Patent Examination Cycle" and hereby reply as follows.

In your suggestions, you focused on the needs of innovative entities for patent review time limits, and provided opinions and suggestions in terms of response time for review opinions, review mode, proposal timing management, review working mechanism, etc., which are highly targeted and of reference significance. Our Office deeply expresses its sincere Recognize it, and carefully incorporate it into practical work to continuously improve the efficiency of patent examination.

1. Regarding reasonable compression of patent response time

According to the "Patent Examination Guidelines", in the substantive examination procedure of an invention patent application, the time limit for the applicant to reply to the first notice of examination opinion is 4 months, and the time limit for replying to the second notice of examination opinion is 2 months. These response times are upper limits, mainly to protect the rights and interests of applicants and allow sufficient time to prepare statement materials. Applicants can respond in advance based on the actual situation, thereby speeding up the review process. In addition, in order to meet the needs of innovative entities, our office also provides accelerated examination methods such as priority examination and pre-examination by the Intellectual Property Protection Center. The time limit for applicants to respond to the examination opinion notice is also shortened accordingly. In the future, our office will continue to pay attention to social needs, further study the patent response time limit based on your suggestions, and continue to improve relevant regulations.

2. Regarding promoting the smart patent review model

Our office attaches great importance to the application of new technologies in patent examination and actively promotes the intelligent upgrading and construction of patent examination and retrieval systems. The intelligent retrieval part is already online and the intelligent review part will be online this year. The system uses modern information technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and microservices to empower patent review. It focuses on the review of invention substance and introduces technologies such as intelligent semantic retrieval, machine translation, and natural language processing to realize review and retrieval. Integrated deep integration, more efficient positioning and comparison of documents, and more intelligent evaluation of patent application documents will greatly enhance the digitalization and intelligence level of the patent review process. In addition, the system will further build a unified portal, change the original system's multiple entrances to log in separately, and provide one-stop services for external users such as applicants, agencies, and the public, and will basically realize the "full online handling of patent affairs." ". In the future, our office will continue to pay attention to the development trend of new technologies, fully tap the potential of new technology applications, continuously optimize and improve the system, provide more intelligent support for patent examination, and provide more convenient services to the society.

3. Regarding strengthening the timing management of patent proposals

Our office conducts unified and centralized management of patent application sources based on the principles of fairness, justice and hierarchical classification. Patent applications in subdivided fields are usually proposed in chronological order rather than in a "random proposal" manner. For patent applications involving key national development industries and key local encouraged industries, accelerated examination will be achieved through priority examination, pre-examination by the Intellectual Property Protection Center, etc., to meet the needs of the country and innovation entities. At the same time, we use "centralized review" and "regular cancellation of accounts" to strive to eliminate the backlog. On the one hand, we will improve the review capabilities in backlog areas by expanding the methods of review manpower recruitment and internal staff deployment. On the other hand, we will implement special actions to reduce the backlog, formulate timetables and roadmaps, and steadily reduce the number of long-term cases. Since 2019, 550,000 long-term cases have been cleared up intensively. As of the end of 2021, the review cycle for high-value invention patents has been reduced to 13.3 months, and the average review cycle for invention patents has been reduced to 18.5 months. In the future, our office will continue to strengthen the case source management of patent applications, continue to carry out special work to clean up long-cycle cases, further leverage the power of review collaboration, and ensure that the target task of reducing the review cycle of invention patents is completed.

4. Regarding improving the scientific examination level of patents

The patent system aims to encourage invention and creation, stimulate innovation, and promote scientific and technological progress and economic and social development by protecting the results of intellectual activities. Our office conducts patent examinations in strict accordance with the Patent Law and the Implementing Rules of the Patent Law. By judging whether the patent application has novelty, creativity and practicality, we evaluate the innovative height of the patent application technology and promote the improvement of the technical content of inventions and creations. In the future, based on your suggestions, we will take multiple measures to improve the technical literacy, search level and ability to correctly apply the law of the patent examiners, make review conclusions commensurate with the technical level of the patent application, and effectively protect the innovation enthusiasm and legitimate rights and interests of the applicant.

5. Regarding the establishment of a constraint and incentive mechanism for patent examination work

Our bureau has gradually built and improved the multi-level review quality assurance system and review business guidance system at bureaus, departments and divisions, established an review business guidance group composed of senior review experts in various fields, optimized the technical expert database, and timely responded to and solved problems encountered in review practice. difficult questions. Examiners are encouraged to summarize patent application document writing strategies from the perspective of patent examination, strengthen communication with innovative entities through holding public welfare lectures, on-site visits and surveys, etc., and continuously strengthen the awareness of front-line service. At the same time, an examination quality evaluation system covering the entire examination process including preliminary examination, substantive examination, re-examination invalidation, and various business types such as inventions, utility models, and designs has been established to improve the supervision and evaluation mechanism. By awarding medals to individuals with outstanding performance in improving the quality and efficiency of examinations and giving full play to the role of the "three-job linkage" incentive policy of job grades and titles, examiners are encouraged to focus on their main responsibilities of examination, do their jobs well, and pursue professional excellence.

In the next step, our office will continue to promote concept updating, technological innovation, and work innovation. Guided by national needs and user satisfaction, we will learn from excellent foreign experience, continuously improve patent examination policies, promote intelligent examination, and increase the intensity of long-cycle case processing. , Improve review capabilities and levels, strengthen work constraints and incentives, continue to improve review quality and review efficiency, and provide services and support for the construction of an innovative country.

We sincerely thank you for your concern and support for intellectual property work. We hope to continue to pay attention to the development of intellectual property and provide valuable opinions and suggestions on our work.

State Intellectual Property Office

August 4, 2022

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